The moral of this story is, sometimes new characters drop great salvage.

A few days ago, I noticed the Alphabet Boys mining in one of the systems where I tend to hang out. I called them the Alphabet Boys because they were four of them mining in Bantams, and they were named assky, bssky, cssky, and dssky.

Now, normally I don’t mess with Bantam miners. Been there, done that, was glad to move past it. But, in my experience, groups like this, with names like that, grow up to be macro-miners, asteroid farmers, or worse. And besides, they were jettisoning Rich Plagioclase like it was sewage. So, over the course of several days, I several times grabbed up half a hauler full of ore that I found drifting in their vicinity.

During that process, I noticed that cssky was sometimes to be seen in an Osprey cruiser.

So this morning, I warp into the belt in my Crane to see bssky in his Bantam, mining into a jetcan “owned” (if things that have been jettisoned could be said to be owned) by cssky, who was present — but not mining — in the Osprey. As I approached the can, cssky warped away. I salvaged the abandoned ore, and — curious to see what cssky might be up to — hung around for a bit.

Back comes cssky, full of wrath and vengeance and light missiles. He’s had a chance to refit, and a Crane transport versus a properly fitted (not mining fitted) Osprey can get into a world of hurt. So I warp back to the dock, as cssky flashes an angry red in my rear view mirror.

Light missiles? And he was missing me with some kind of gun? That’s not a properly fitted (which is to say, that’s not a dangerous) Osprey.

So out of my transport I jumps, and into the Iron Crowbar, a salvage Ferox whose purpose in life is prying up salvage that’s not properly nailed down.

Back to the belts. Is friend cssky still there? Why yes, there he is, and in handy warp scramble range, too.

Pew pew pew. Remember the first rule of dealing with Ironfleet: our salvage vessels may look helpless, and sometimes they are. But we do have other ships, and when you open fire on us, we will shoot back.

In the event, it took less than three full volleys of mixed heavy missiles for cssky to go kaboom. I didn’t expect to get to salvage the wreck, because bssky was right beside it in a Bantam. But I targetted him just for fun, and as a distraction, while lumbering in for my salvage. And what to my wondering eye should appear in the wreck, but a tasty multi-million ISK Local Hull Conversion Expanded Cargo I?

To date, I think that’s the best thing that’s dropped from a ship that’s been foolish enough to shoot at Ironfleet salvage vessels.

The killmail was illuminating. The pair of Limos standard missile launchers on a cruiser is less than optimum, though fairly common. But lasers?

This entry was posted
on Wednesday, February 14th, 2007 at 11:26 am and is filed under Salvage Notes, Today In Ironfleet.
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